I’m in Columbia for the first-in-the-South Democratic presidential primary. As I walked around the Statehouse grounds, I stumbled upon the African American History Monument designed by Ed Dwight.
The monument’s twelve panels trace the “African American experience from the auction block, to slave labor, to the civil war, to emancipation, to the reconstruction, and to the emergence of African Americans as astronauts, judges, business persons and political leaders.”
Racial pride soon turned to anger. I looked up and the Confederate battle flag was in my face. The monument and the hate symbol are only a few yards apart. In fact, the monument was part of the compromise to keep the Confederate flag on the Statehouse grounds. But the compromise was a hollow victory.
The Confederate flag was first placed atop the Statehouse in 1962. It stayed there until 2000, when all hell broke loose. Nearly 50,000 marched and demanded the rebel flag be removed from the Statehouse dome and the two legislative chambers. The legislature reached an agreement to remove it and place it directly behind a Confederate soldiers monument.
So, the Confederate flag now flies from a flagpole and is unavoidable from a main thoroughfare. Illuminated by spotlights at night, this symbol of racial oppression is more visible than the American flag.
While Barack Obama is expected to win the primary with the overwhelming support of black voters, polls show there is a racial divide. South Carolina’s leading newspaper, The State, reports:
White voters see the primary from the opposite direction: 40 percent support Edwards, 36 percent back Clinton, 10 percent are behind Obama and 14 percent are undecided.
Truth is, the Palmetto State’s ugly racial past “is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”
